European Union, member states and Agencies

[Fredled]

Can Europe defend itself without America?

The article is not accessible to me but the question is a good one.

By defending itself, it depends against whom. In the current circumstance, everybody is thinking about Russia.
But which Russia? If it's Russia in the current state, then yes. not as easily as we would like, but Putin would not enjoy any victory, not even an initial one as he did in 2022.
Now, if Russia stops the war in Ukraine, and double down on mass production of weapons, then in 5 years they could pose a very serious challenge to an Europe without the US. Yet, that's a lots of if and would.

Now the oposite scenario: Russia became a friendly nation again, and the treath of war with this country is no more. But other treaths arise. These other treaths are unlikely to be as big as Russia.

Another way to sum it up would be: Europe without the US could not defend itself against Russia + China.
Because, as we see with Ukraine, China plays a huge role on the balance of power.
____________________

The reason is that France is financialy close to bankrupcy.

I think this overstates the situation somewhat. Most rating agencies still give France a AA credit rating.

@Fredled, in regard to your “stupidity” comment:

There is a big difference between what Europe can afford collectively and what each country can do to help Ukraine and boost defence forces.
Currently, military aid to Ukraine is less than 0.8% of GDP. This is an average number: Some EU countries spend less, others spend more, much more. Yet, it was calculated that if every EU member + Uk and Norway would spend 1% of GDP on military aid for Ukraine, we would have more than enough to provide Ukraine everything that they need (wxcept soldiers).
See post by @personaldesas above.

Europe, collectively could spend more on Ukraine (or on something else) if they would like to whereas for many countries idividually, that would be difficult and in the case of France, nearly impossible.
This magic comes from the ability of the EU to draw funds, i.e. printing money and allocate this money to a specific purpose. They did it during the Covid. They can do it one more time. It will cause inflation, but the amounts needed for Ukraine are not that big that they would create rapid inflation. Remember, it's only about a fraction of 1% GDP more than what we spend already.

France is not able to increase spending on Ukraine military aid, as it's not able to increase spending anywhere. For those who don't know hat happens in France right now: The deficit is much worse than previousely announced. The government missed their projections by several dozen of billions, roughly by 1.5% of GDP.
To make things worse, they are in the midst of a political crisis for this reason and for other reasons.

Some will argue that France is not worse off than Italy and Spain, looking only at current numbers. The problem is that the financial situation of Spain and Italy is improving while the situation of France is worsening rapidly.
If France doesn't reverse course, they will be downgraded and could be in the same scenario as Greece was in 2012. The situation is not as bad as for Greece circa 2012, but should it worsen, it will be close to that.

I don't know as much about the UK economy, but their GDP showed negative or zero growth since the Brexit. The Brexit plays a big part in this issue, but it's not the only reason. The point is that they have also problems with deficit and debt.
UK could increase aid to Ukraine slightly, but we shouldn't expect miracles.

________________________

Your certainty doesn't seem to be based on History.

Yes it is. History shows that since WW2, there has been only one war in Europe: The Balkan War after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yougoslavia. And it was a very small war, between very small countries.

Let's imagine for a moment that Putin started an air war (LBJ/Vietnam) instead of an invasion. One year of missiles and bombs (like now) and a 20km no man's land from the Russian border through artillery. Your argument is that you would be happy (sorry, not that outraged) with that because there was no invasion (or being "really invaded", I am still waiting for you to explain the difference.)

No, it's not my argument. I wrote in the origignal post that it didn't mean that other forms of violence are good[sic], in the sens that they are also violent and also unacceptable.

For example, bombing Serbia was, in my opinion, not acceptable despite the crimes committed by the Milosevic regime. That was the only violent actoon taken by European countries and the US in Europe (besides Serbia and Kosovo fighting each other).

Yet, there are graduations in the scale of acceptability. Some things are worse than others. Invasion is worse than aerial bombing. Thought it also depends how it's done. Aerial bombing can be worse than an invasion on a humanitarian basis in some cases or better in otehr cases, but in any case, it's worse legaly.
In the current case: Putin is doing both, both in the worse way.

I hope that this helped you clarify my position.

@personaldesas
Sorry for the others if this os off topic od borring. We are not going to talk about that indefinitely.

 

[SolarisKenzo]

A good article about what the EU energy policy should be in the future.

Op-ed: Ending Europe's anti-nuclear dogma

As Europe faces soaring energy demands and strives for climate neutrality, embracing nuclear power as a stable, low-carbon energy source is vital t...

www.theparliamentmagazine.eu

The EU current energy mix is made by circa 45% of combustible fuels (mostly coal and gas), 20% nuclear and the remaining 35% of various renewable sources.


After the russian invasion of Ukraine, the EU faced various challenges (Russia was and still is one of Europe's main oil, gas and coal supplier) and was forced to change its energy policy previously based mainly on cheap fuel from Russia.
This led to the strenghtening of the EU Continental grid, which connects mainland EU and Scandinavia, and to a new push in nuclear energy.

The European Union currently operates 104 nuclear reactors (97GWe) and is swiflty changing its policy into investing more in nuclear energy, especially SMRs (but also large-sized reactors).
The last reactor built is the Olkiluoto's EPR (European Pressurized Reactor), a huge 1,600 MW reactor connected to the grid in september 2023, with 2 more reactors being built in Flamanville and Mochovche.
12 new reactors are at various stage (from preliminary site-preparations to early project) and 45 more have been proposed.
These massive investments are however coming when the EU nuclear power plants are already very old and many of them will have to undergo serious modernization to grant a life-extending update.

First SMR projects selected by European Industrial Alliance

The European Commission has selected nine small modular reactor projects - including two lead-cooled fast reactors - in the initial round of applications to form Project Working Groups under the European Industrial Alliance on SMRs. ;

world-nuclear-news.org

The EU SMR Alliance is also providing massive funding to many european companies to start building small reactors in the EU to mitigate the aging of the current plants. The first 9 designs were selected in october and are now starting the projects.

Overall, the situation is critical.
Europe did not invest in its energy production since basically the end of the 20th century and is now facing the perfect storm.
The green madness of 100% renewable that frezeed EU's energy policy for years is now forcing us to pay the price of blindness and lack of ambition.

 

[John Fedup]

A good article about what the EU energy policy should be in the future.

Op-ed: Ending Europe's anti-nuclear dogma

As Europe faces soaring energy demands and strives for climate neutrality, embracing nuclear power as a stable, low-carbon energy source is vital t...

www.theparliamentmagazine.eu

The EU current energy mix is made by circa 45% of combustible fuels (mostly coal and gas), 20% nuclear and the remaining 35% of various renewable sources.
View attachment 52023

After the russian invasion of Ukraine, the EU faced various challenges (Russia was and still is one of Europe's main oil, gas and coal supplier) and was forced to change its energy policy previously based mainly on cheap fuel from Russia.
This led to the strenghtening of the EU Continental grid, which connects mainland EU and Scandinavia, and to a new push in nuclear energy.

The European Union currently operates 104 nuclear reactors (97GWe) and is swiflty changing its policy into investing more in nuclear energy, especially SMRs (but also large-sized reactors).
The last reactor built is the Olkiluoto's EPR (European Pressurized Reactor), a huge 1,600 MW reactor connected to the grid in september 2023, with 2 more reactors being built in Flamanville and Mochovche.
12 new reactors are at various stage (from preliminary site-preparations to early project) and 45 more have been proposed.
These massive investments are however coming when the EU nuclear power plants are already very old and many of them will have to undergo serious modernization to grant a life-extending update.

First SMR projects selected by European Industrial Alliance

The European Commission has selected nine small modular reactor projects - including two lead-cooled fast reactors - in the initial round of applications to form Project Working Groups under the European Industrial Alliance on SMRs. ;

world-nuclear-news.org

The EU SMR Alliance is also providing massive funding to many european companies to start building small reactors in the EU to mitigate the aging of the current plants. The first 9 designs were selected in october and are now starting the projects.

Overall, the situation is critical.
Europe did not invest in its energy production since basically the end of the 20th century and is now facing the perfect storm.
The green madness of 100% renewable that frezeed EU's energy policy for years is now forcing us to pay the price of blindness and lack of ambition.

Green madness was certainly part of the problem along with significant misinformation about nuclear albeit the Japanese incident is also a recent factor against NPG but cost overruns on major NPG projects sure didn’t help. The realization that only NPG can realistically replace fossil fuel along with SMRs to address cost will start the ball rolling. SMR cost is critical.